One year on

Rock drum is the first and current editor-in-chief of This Month in GLAM. He presented on the newsletter at the December 2011 GLAMcamp Amsterdam. The slides of that presentation can be seen here. In this article he talks about the experience of seeing both the GLAM movement and the newsletter develop over 2011.

In the beginning

Liam first contacted me about a newsletter for the GLAM project towards the end of January last year. We envisioned that it would "look rather like the technology report in the Signpost", which the first edition did: there were a few bullet points and a photo (see right). Since then there have been 11 issues, delivered to an ever-growing number of people.

August was dominated by Wikimania. The annual conference, this year held in Haifa, Israel, hosted 720 participants from 56 countries and was attended by GLAM project participants from around the world, coming together to share their projects and ideas. The conference featured three days full of presentations, based around multiple tracks, one of which was "Wiki Culture and the Community," which allowed for the development of two "GLAMorous" sessions and other sessions involving GLAM related projects. Various other events took place as well, as part of the conference and after hours.

Wikimedia meetup in Taghreedat, as part of Liam Wyatt's visit to Qatar.

October was a great month with GLAM really starting to take off in several institutions in Israel and GLAM programs Serbia given a kick start.

November saw more exciting developments elsewhere. In the final months before his fellowship ended in December, Liam Wyatt visited Wikimedian communities in the Arabian Gulf and East Asia. He paid a visit to Al Jazeera who agreed to release all of the images on their Flickr stream under a Creative Commons license. These have been imported to Commons and can be found here.

The year, for GLAM, ended in Amsterdam. Around 60 Wikimedians from all around the globe gathered in the Dutch city for the second ever GLAMcamp at the beginning of December.

More to come

I’m excited to see how the newsletter and the movement as a whole will continue to develop over the coming months. There are already several big GLAM events (and plenty of small ones) planned for 2012 and I look forward to seeing where the GLAM project will be this time next year.

NARA gave the Wikimedians access to special collection and all the tools needed to scan and document never before scanned images from the archives. Wikimedians scanned photographic images from NASA, Women's suffrage in the United States, Chile, and battleships. Wikimedians also participated in FedFlix; digitizing videos and experimenting with digitizing sound recordings. Highlights include radio broadcasts that encouraged Americans to answer questions from census-takers for the 1940 United States Census. Photos are being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and volunteers are needed to help categorize the new images!

JFK assassination audio released on Wikimedia Commons

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Air Force One audio reel 1, following the JFK assassination

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Air Force One audio reel 2

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has released two audio reel recordings of conversations between Air Force One pilots and crew and personnel on the ground, following the JFK assassination in 1963. The recordings are 2 hours and 22 minutes in length. David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, explains that the audio "provides additional documentation concerning the immediate response of the U.S. Government on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination." User:Dominic was provided with a 1.4 GB raw audio file, converted it to .ogg format and had it uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, at the just about the same time that NARA publicly announced this release.

The Raab Collection, a Philadelphia-area dealer of autographs, historical documents and manuscripts, discovered the audio reels. Raab had the audio "professionally digitized" and a copy donated to the National Archives. [1] The audio was discovered among papers and materials in the collections of Senior Kennedy military aide and Army General Chester "Ted" Clifton, Jr. General Clifton. Raab is selling the original audio reels for US$500,000.

US Cultural Partnerships report

January marked the official start of Lori Phillips' role as US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator in 2012. A summary of relevant tasks will be reported here and on the Wikimedia Foundation's monthly report on a monthly basis. In January...

GLAMcamp DC, which will take place in early February, is in its final stages of preparation. This has included establishing a proposed framework for GLAM:US collaboration, which will be presented at GLAMcamp and finalized as a goal of the event alongside other documentation and tool development.

There has been ongoing follow-up on leads and expressions of interest from GLAM institutions, as well as consolidation of interested parties and contacts into a single, master list. This streamlining of information will continue at GLAMcamp DC.

New partnership starts with the Delaware Art Museum

Mid-January marked an announcement that a partnership with the Delaware Art Museum has formed. Smallbones is heading up an effort to improve content and images related to the museums collection on English Wikipedia and beyond. "I just contacted the museum and told them I was interested in writing about their artworks on Wikipedia, and they were excited to work together," explained Smallbones at the recent Wikipedia Day in New York City. Smallbones first major effort for the museum was the article about Lady Lilith, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The article goes into great detail about the documentation and creation process behind the artwork. Learn more about how you can help here.

Whistler's Mother and American Gothic now high resolution

Several members of the GLAM community collaborated on an exploration of notable fine art images that were needed in high resolution on Wikimedia Commons. Two artworks that were identified were Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1, better known as Whistler's Mother, and American Gothic, both iconic works of American art. In particular, it was determined that the existing version of Whistler's Mother hosted on Commons was, in fact, a photograph of a smaller reproduction and not the original painting. Similar mix-ups have occurred with other notable artworks on Commons, including John William Waterhouse's Cleopatra and Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave at Kanagawa. It was suggested that this is because it is often easier to get images from commercial websites offering reproductions than it is to get images from the galleries and museums that house the original works. High resolution versions of both paintings were acquired and are now available on Wikimedia Commons.

GLAMcamp DC on the horizon. The second GLAMcamp to be held in the United States will take place February 10-12. This event will bring together Wikimedians and GLAM representatives interested in furthering US GLAM relationships and programs. GLAMcamp DC is sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration and Creative Commons.

Public art copyright guidelines research considered a win for WikiProject Public art. The Wikimedia Foundation sponsored legal research into United States freedom of panorama regarding public art. The research, which has determined that public artworks that are placed in the public sphere (i.e. parks, city streets), were made before 1978, and do not have an obvious copyright mark on the work are public domain and eligible for use in Wikimedia Commons. This is a win for participants in WikiProject Public art, who have seen article image use and uploads increase since the announcement.

GLAMcamp DC to feature first GLAM event Friendly Space Policy. Inspired by the Friendly Space Policy developed for Wikimedia Foundation technical events, GLAMcamp DC has chosen to develop a policy that will provide a safe and welcome environment for all participants. While met with some protest and questions, the policy hopes to be developed for use at larger events and currently is being developed by Wikimedia UK for events.

Historic American Buildings Survey images now on Commons. Images from the Historic American Buildings Survey are now being transferred by Multichill. This collection of over 35,000 photographic image and drawings of historical buildings in the United States all fall into the public domain. Explore the collection here.

Librarians flock to rescue students in the dark during the Wikipedia Blackout. Librarians around the English-speaking world flocked to Twitter and other social media tools to assist students during the Wikipedia blackout on January 8. Read more about how librarians turned superheroes in this article from Inside Higher Ed: "Libraries: A Paper Wikipedia" by Mitch Smith.

Tweet us and we'll tweet you back: GLAM-WIKI now on Twitter! Thanks to efforts made by US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator Lori Phillips, GLAM-WIKI is now on Twitter! Follow @glamwiki today!

Archives of American Art seeks new Wikipedian in Residence The Archives of American Art are seeking an intern to serve as the second Wikipedian in Residence at the archives. Applications for summer internships are due February 24. Visit their website to learn more.

Wikimania 2012 Submissions are now being accepted for Wikimania 2012, which will take place July 12-13 in Washington, DC. GLAM is a track for the conference. Panels, papers and presentations are due March 18. Learn more here.

Provisions Research Residencies. Provision Library, a non-profit "instigator of arts and social change," is seeking residents for their upcoming research program. Applicants interested in cultural collaboration and copyright are encouraged to participate, making this a great opportunity for GLAM WIKI fans. Residencies will take place at George Mason University, just outside of Washington DC and include housing and a stipend. Applications due March 1 2012. Please visit here for more information.

QRpedia codes in Monmouth; brief news

Covering a town in QRpedia codes with MonmouthpediA

User:Mrjohncummings is John Cummings, the project lead for MonmouthpediA, a project in the Welsh town of Monmouth which aims to provide access to information on notable places, peoples, artefacts and more around the town.

MonmouthpediA is the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town. The project aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible. QRpedia codes will be used, a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. QR codes are extremely useful, as physical signs have no way of displaying the same amount of information and in a potentially huge number of languages. The aim is to have 1,000 QRpedia codes in Monmouth by April including in several museums. A free WiFi network will be set up throughout the town and tablet PCs will be available in the museums to lower the cost of access to the information.

Since the project started we have had fifty new articles in English, about twenty in Welsh and a small number in other languages. This is especially remarkable as we had no active Wikipedians in Monmouth when the project launched. John Cummings had to move from Bristol back to his home town to lead the initiative. The project is achieving a lot because Wikimedia UK has gone into partnership with Monmouthshire County Council and nearly every significant cultural society in Monmouth. Besides the Town Council the project also has significant links to university research in both Newport and Cardiff. New articles about Monmouth have been on "Did you Know?" a dozen times in the last few weeks.

Not surprisingly the project has attracted news coverage from the BBC and The Guardian newspaper as well as being reported in several different languages. One blog asked "Is Monmouthpedia the future of Wikipedia?" - we will find out in April, when the celebrations of what we have achieved begin. Well, we say "we have achieved" but hopefully it is what "you have achieved". Monmouth cannot do this without your help.

Monmouth Market Hall Fire.jpg

Some of the images that have been uploaded since the project began.

Progress so far

The first code of many!

So far contributors have created 72 new articles and improved 90 articles, over 300 new images, there have been 12 entries in the "Did you Know?" on the English Wikipedia main page. New contributors to Wikipedia (as a result of the project) are choosing to learn how to edit Wikipedia and to give their time for the combined knowledge of others, I think this demonstrates how much people value free information and it’s benefits. It’s been amazing to teach people simple tools to give a wider reach to the information they have.

I started Monmouthpedia because I wanted everyone to have free and easily available information about the place in which they live. I grew up in Monmouth, I knew enough about the area to make a start by myself and make a plan that other people could see what I was doing and join in and add to and change. Local groups and the councils (Monmouthshire County Council have recently adopted the Open Government License) have been wonderfully supportive and there is a well connected network of people who are willing to help. Wikimedia UK have been very helpful and have put a lot of time and effort into supporting me. I feel as though for the large part I have been pushing against open doors, I’ve had a steady stream of new people to teach Wikipedia editing to since I started. The one thing we're really missing are articles in languages other than English and Welsh.

The project is still very much a work in progress, we are starting to work with schools and other groups, there is such a wide range of opportunities for so many groups of people to be involved, it feels like we’re trying something new every day.

QRpedia shortlisted for a Smart UK award:Terence Eden and Roger Bamkin (Victuallers) had the opportunity to visit the Westminster conference centre to talk with the press and the judges of the Smart UK awards. QRpedia had been chosen from a high number of entrants to be in the final twenty shortlisted to represent the UK as ther best innovative mobile based idea. Competition was stiff with other entrants including being a coating which when applied to a phone allows it to be used in water and and another which enableded phones to see hand gestures. Only four will be chosen to go forward to the global competition, but it is an honour to be considered. For more information see Smart UK's QRpedia Q&A.

Public Domain Day, Workshop and GLAM Toolbox

GLAM Toolbox

The "GLAM team" began to prepare a draft of a "GLAM toolbox" which will provide a dedicated interface for cultural institutions with specific tools, documentation in French and a collaborative workspace. The project is currently in development and will be voted upon by the Board of Wikimedia France in February. We will define the project with the goal of internationalization.

Workshop in the Library of Toulouse

On January 21, nine Wikimedians conducted a workshop at the Library of Toulouse. They taught the public how to contribute to Wikipedia and the librarians how to conduct a workshop.

Other workshops are planned for the rest of the year. The theme of the contributions will be "the districts of Toulouse", in line with the theme of the Library in 2012. It is expected that these workshops will be done only by the librarians of Toulouse, without the involvement of any Wikipedians.

URAA in French

On January 23, Jean-Fred wrote a post on the Wikimedia France blog to explain URAA, with the assistance of other Wikimedians. The blog was the first in French explaining the problem of URAA and its possible impact on Wikimedia Commons. It was viewed by about 3,500 readers and has been cited in numerous online journals since publication. The blog post can be read here(in French)

a legal explanation about the Public Domain (made by Creative Commons and Communia)

a list of works passed in the public domain in 2012,

a page to encourage users tu reuse the public domain

the announcement of a conference about the public domain

The objective was to teach the public about the Public Domain, to show the richness of the Public Domain, but also threats to it and the complicated legislation (a demonstration of the OKF calculator was very effective).

The event, which brought together around 50 participants, was the first time that an event related to the Public Domain Day was held in France. It is hoped that this will be replicated next year. The website dedicated to the Public Domain remains online and can be found here(in French).

Wikipedia Academy 2012

Wikimedia Germany is organizing the Wikipedia Academy 2012, and the Call for Papers was released this month, inviting contributions under a set of themes around Wikipedia and free knowledge, many of which match with GLAM activities.

Lange Nächte

Abstract

The Long nights of museums and Long nights of the sciences are a series of events that enjoy a growing popularity in Germany, as they bring together GLAM institutions and the public. The first informal GLAM:Wiki partnerships are beginning to take shape within this framework, and interested Wikimedians are welcome to join in.

Old and New Italian GLAMs contributing to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons

Documentation about the first GLAMs in Italy contributing to Wikipedia: QR codes and licenses

Two case studies have been created to document the pilot collaborations between GLAMs and Wikipedia in Italy: the collaboration with the National Technological and Archeological Park of the Colline Metallifere Grossetane in Tuscany Region and the collaboration with the International Centre for Architectural Studies Andrea Palladio based in Vicenza.

Between the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 within the project Parco-tag, the staff of the National Technological and Archeological Park of the Colline Metallifere Grossetane has created QR codes from Semapadia to identify mineralogical sites and to link them to Wikipedia articles created to document the territory. The initiative was officially presented in collaboration with Wikimedia Italy in November 2007 during the Expò of Cultural Heritage in Venice. In September 2007, the International Centre for Architectural Studies Andrea Palladio has provided high quality texts and images about the entire work of the architect Andrea Palladio which has been used to create articles on Wikipedia in Italian and English.

Milan African Collections support WikiAfrica and contribute to Wikimedia Commons

The collection of art from Africa, Asia and Latin America owned by Milan city council at the Castello Sforzesco will be uploaded on Wikimedia Commons. The Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco has just enthusiastically signed a letter in which they express their support to WikiAfrica and they agree to provide 4.000 images and description of their works in CC BY-SA. The collection is not open to the public because it is still waiting for its museum; Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Projects represent a very important step to make the collection available for the first time to the public. This is also the first public GLAM in Italy contributing to Wikipedia. Fondazione Passarè has also expressed its support to the project WikiAfrica. Fondazione Passarè is the foundation which preserves and valorize the works and archives of Alessandro Passarè (1927-2006), an Italian collector of African art who carefully documented his travels to Africa. 300 work of the Passarè foundation are part of the Raccolte Extraeuropee del Castello Sforzesco and they are currently and partially in view in an exhibition at Castello Sforzesco.

News in brief

Training for Wikipedians in residence, March-May 2012, Milan. Three months side-by-side training for Wikipedians in residence, lettera27 Foundation in collaboration with Wikimedia Italia.

Content donation in Mexico City

Museo del Objeto del Objeto

One of the 22 new images

Mexico’s second museum to donate images to Wikipedia is the Museo del Objeto del Objeto. This oddly-named institution, which translates to "Object (purpose) of the Object Museum", was founded in 2010 in Mexico City by Bruno Newman of the Zimat Communications company. The museum’s permanent collection consists of Newman’s personal collection of advertising, packaging and gadgets, dating from 1810 to the present, gathered over 40 + years of his life. The purpose of the museum is to promote scholarship of commercial design and communication with the collection as a base.

The first donation of images is of 22 objects from the permanent collection and includes items such as packages for cigarettes, soap, mucilage (who is old enough remember what that is?) and more. While processing the donation, I found the images extremely useful as many articles either lacked images or lacked image with a historical perspective. However, I also found them difficult to categorize. The full donation can be seen at Images from the Museo del Objeto del Objeto.

The Teylers Challenge

Writing Contest: The Teylers Challenge

History

The front of Teylers Museum

The entrance

Pieter Teyler van der Hulst died in 1778 and, in his will, he specified that his collection and capital had to be used for the promotion of art and science. For this purpose, a foundation was set up with five directors who had to manage the money for the specified purpose, including the gathering of knowledge. At that time, most knowledge was reserved for universities and the clergy only. In Haarlem however, there was no university and the clergy only had limited power. Haarlem was therefore the ideal location to inform the people about science and art. In the following centuries, Teyler's Museum bought thousands of pieces in the fields of fossils, minerals, paintings, drawings, coins/medals, and instruments to show scientific discoveries, but books were the best sources of knowledge. In that age, books were real pieces of art where art and the sciences were brought together, to make showing and describing the discoveries possible. The first purchase with Pieter Teyler's money was the purchase of an encyclopaedia.

Presentation and tour

Wikipedia and the Teyler's Museum both have the same goal: to collect knowledge and make this knowledge available for the public. With this background, a partnership between both institutes has been organized to use the benefits of each. To kick-off of this partnership, Wikimedia Nederland and the Teyler's Museum organized on 21 January a tour with a view behind the scenes of the oldest museum in the Netherlands. After a plenary presentation by Marjan Scharloo (the director of the Teyler's Museum) and Ziko van Dijk (president of Wikimedia Nederland), the writing contest The Teylers Challenge was announced. Then the audience was divided into seven groups, each led through the different parts of the museum, with a guide explaining the pieces held in those sections. Afterwards, a New Year reception was held by the chapter at the Grote Markt.

Teylers and Wikipedia

With this presentation and tour, The Teylers Challenge was presented: an international writing contest on Wikipedia about subjects that are linked to the Teyler's Museum. The articles may be written in any language, about a wide spectrum of subjects, and there is only one condition to participate: on the article there must be a blue link to the article of the Teyler's Museum in that language. This means that if the museum article doesn't yet exist in that language, it must be created (and that article can be part of the contest as well). The Teyler's Museum offers us images and information on the relevant topics. Information about some of the topics can be found on their website ( Teyler's Museum | Teylers Universe ). The museum will also respond to requests for information or images to be obtained for articles on Wikipedia. These requests can be put on w:en:Wikipedia:GLAM/Teylers/One on one collaborations (in English or Dutch). The writing contest runs until May 2012 and there are prizes to be won, made available by the Teyler's Museum.

The ideals of Pieter Teyler in the 18th century match with the ideals of Wikipedia today. Let's take up the challenge and enrich Wikipedia on the fields of art and science, and share this information with the world.

Wiki Loves Monuments in Russia

Wiki Loves Art Nouveau in Russia / Wiki Loves Art Nouveau в России

The banner, which can used in blogs for welcoming to the exhibition (it's version with the logo of Europeana and the code to insert see here)
Баннер, который можно использовать в блогах для приглашения на выставку (его вариант с логотипом Europeana и кодом для вставки см. здесь)

In January it was opened exhibition in Russian "Вики любит Ар-нуво", the first exhibition of Europeana in Russian. The exhibition "Wiki Loves Art Nouveau" was opened in December on the results of user voting by jury's Wiki Loves Monuments'2011 shortlist (WLM is competition dedicated to photographing monuments in different countries). It is planned to continue cooperation within the framework of which other virtual exhibitions will be translated into Russian too, and, in addition, Europeana is looking for volunteers who will make virtual exhibitions available in other languages​​.

Views to the Australian Paralympic Committee related content were down by half from period between 1 December 2011 to 30 December 2011 from the period between 26 October 2011 to November 24 2011, with 55,900 article views compared to 76,000 views. This was attributed to several factors, including the holiday season and the lack of a large number of DYKs helping to drive views to articles. The most popular article in December was Jeremy Doyle, while in the November period it was Troy Sachs.

Several HOPAU participants did a mini edit-a-thon on 2 January 2011, and worked to improve the article about Brian McNicholl, a Paralympian who competed in at least six Paralympic Games and, between the Paralympics and Stoke Mandeville Games, won six medals. This was followed up by additional research and source work at the National Sport Information Centre where sources were found to help improve articles about Victorian Paralympians active during the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

There has been a major push by Graham87 to add information about Australian Paralympians who have been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia and other honorary medals. He has updated over 50 articles about individual Paralympians with this information. In addition, there have been several discussions on the hopau mailing list where Paralympians have shared their knowledge and related their experiences about getting these honours for Paralympic medal winners.

As part of an ongoing effort to better organise GLAM materials related to the HOPAU project on English Wikipedia, a WikiProject box was created for inclusion on talk pages. It has been added to many articles that are covered by the project including Peter Homann, Priya Cooper, Australia men's national goalball team and Australia at the Paralympics. This has several benefits, including make it easier to find articles, to get better project statistics, and more easily point potential contributors to an assessment area to highlight our best content.

RecentChangesCamp 2012 Canberra

Opening circle at RecentChangesCamp 2012 with GLAM people, Australian Wikimedians, several university professors and an educational consultant, a representative from Cancer Council Australia and Appropedia in attendance

RecentChangesCamp is an Open Space facilitated general wiki conference that has been around since 2006, when it was first held in Portland, Oregon. It has been held yearly ever since in the United States, Canada and Australia, and attracts participants from all over the wiki community including commercial wikis like wikiHow and Wikia staff and community members, non-profit related wiki participants, wiki developers on multiple wiki platforms, open culture enthusiasts, educators using wikis, and people in the GLAM and cultural sector. It is not a GLAM conference, but GLAM participants have always attended, participated with, interacted with and shared their knowledge with the wider wiki community.

National and international participation

Several people from the Australian and international GLAM movement attended RecentChangesCamp 2012 held in Canberra from 20 to 22 January. They included LauraHale, John Vandenberg, Danny_B., Whiteghost.ink, JJ Harrison, Wittylama, Chris Woodrich, and others. While the conference was Australia's general wiki conference and not specifically focused on GLAM, there were several sessions that specifically discussed Australian GLAM efforts including the Australian Paralympic Committee's GLAM project, the National Library of Australia, efforts underway at the National Museum of Australia and Wikimedia Indonesia's LONTAR project. Most of the international participants at RecentChangesCamp 2012 were involved with GLAM projects and visiting Australia for the first time. They were pleased that the conference was being held in Canberra because members of our local GLAM community were in attendance, and because they had a chance to see wild kangaroos out the window of the event venue. Two took the opportunity to go outside, enjoy the beautiful summer weather and take pictures of the 'roos with the intention of uploading these pictures to Commons.

An Indonesian at RCC

Chris Woodrich in Australia

Chris talking about his wiki goals for 2012 during RCC's Closing Circle

Chris Woodrich, a Wikipedian who does freelance work for Wikimedia Indonesia, visited Canberra to attended RecentChangesCamp with scholarship assistance from Wikimedia Indonesia and Wikimedia Australia. He has been active in Wikimedia Indonesia's GLAM efforts with libraries and education. He talked about the needs of the Indonesian Wikimedia community, issues involving creating Indonesian content on the English and Indonesian Wikipedias, and problems regarding the lack of Indonesia-related pictures on Commons. While attending, he made contact with several Australian and international attendees that will help him with future GLAM efforts in Indonesia, and learned about a conference facilitation that might be useful for him on the ground in Indonesia.

A Czech at RCC

Danny B. attending RecentChangesCamp 2012, Canberra

Danny, on the left, with three Australian campers, an American who attended RCC 2009, and a New Zealander

Danny B. from the Czech Republic attended RecentChangesCamp in Australia. RecentChangesCamp is a general wiki conference which uses open-space that attracts people from the wider wiki editing community including commercial wikis, non-profit wikis, wikis used in education, personal wikis, wiki programmers and Wikimedia project wiki contributors. His participation was possible because of grant assistance from Wikimedia Australia. His route from the Czech Republic to Canberra and back took over 70 hours each way, include overnight stays in Seoul, South Korea and Sydney, Australia, and ended with a 3 and a half hour bus ride from Sydney to Canberra. His participation at RecentChangesCamp came about because of connections he made at GLAMcamp Amsterdam in December 2011, where he met LauraHale from Australia and had an extended discussion about wiki metrics. While attending sessions various topic sessions, such as those on technical topics, communication and outreach or cultural outreach session, he interacted with a number of Australian wiki users including those from the education sector, non-profit sector, and government sector, sharing some of his experiences from Czech projects. He was also transferring his experiences at the session focused on starting of New Zealand and Thai chapters.

The Recent Changes Camp also provided an opportunity to discuss some concerns about how broadly the GLAM concept is being used and how that affects Chapter support of volunteer activities. The idea is related to how Chapters can:

best support different types of projects;

make sure funding is applied where it was intended;

help knowledge about such projects be transferred effectively among projects.

John Vandenberg, Whiteghost.ink, JJ Harrison, Chris Woodrich were participants in a session that tried to develop a model for projects that took place in the present, and had an end point, and were therefore different from projects involving ongoing work in organisations (whether GLAMs or other sorts of organisations). The model developed was called "NEXT", (News, Events, eXhibitions, Travel). Wikimedia Australia is providing grant money to fund professional journalist accreditation cards for accredited reporters in Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and other regions not being supported by established chapters. This sort of support is appropriate to NEXT activities and different from the kind that assists by sharing practices suitable for GLAM outreach such as Wikipedians-in-Residence.

The model in detail and its application is explained on the OutreachWiki page NEXT.

National Museum of Australia on copyright

John Vandenberg posing for photographer, Bidgee, at RecentChangesCamp while campers created the schedule

Another session was about Wikipedia efforts by the National Museum of Australia, with a museum staff member facilitating the session. Much of the session revolved around discussing copyright issues surrounding museum collections, and the desire for museums to make more of their collection available to the public by being able to photograph it both institutionally and by the public at large. The museum could not do this, not because of commercial concerns, but because of copyright and trademark issues. For example, Australian-made Holden cars often have the Holden logo, a trademark, on them. It is not easy to take pictures of these cars with the trademark removed without losing the idea of the photograph's subject. In other examples, some items in a collection do not belong to the museum exhibiting them. The copyright belongs to the original owners or the donations come with copyright related restrictions that prohibit the museum from taking pictures or allowing others to take pictures of them. Because copyright and trademark issues vary from item to item in a collection, museums may prohibit visitors generally from taking pictures of the whole collection. Copyright issues are so complex that there are two or three lawyers employed by the National Museum of Australia who spend a great deal of their time working on them.

Metrics

The schedule for day two at RecentChangesCamp 2012, with two GLAM specific sessions, and a copyright session that covered GLAM issues

Amongst GLAM participants, a recurring theme was metrics, how to measure the effectiveness of GLAM projects on Wikimedia Foundation projects, and how these metrics can be used to justify institutional participation in a project. There are a variety of methods that have been designed by German Wikipedians and ones designed by members of Wikimedia Australia like John Vandenberg. The problem is that at the end of the day, most GLAM organisations including the National Library of Australia and the Australian Paralympic Committee have a mission that includes sharing cultural knowledge of their efforts with, in this context, Australian society. This is not something that can easily be measured because it is more a goal than an objective.

The Logan Thunder in white battle for the ball in a game against the Canberra Capitals on 20 January 2012 in a picture taken by JJ Harrison

There was a discussion regarding issues of getting sport-related organisations to donate pictures to Commons, the challenges of working with such organisations, and how to engage Wikimedia Australia members to increase pictures, video and sound at sporting events in a context outside official relationships with a team, league or sport. Ideas included working with our current members to get them organised with journalism credentials on Wikinews, proving the success of programs like Wikimedians to the Games, and personal outreach. There was also a discussion about freedom of panorama in Australia and how this extends to cover live sporting events both inside and outside. Users Bidgee and JJ Harrison, took over 1,000 pictures at the basketball game. For both photographers, this was a unique experience as they rarely photograph sport, which requires a different understanding of framing of pictures. There is a hope to get at least one featured picture from this session and there will be more Australian sport pictures.

Other topics

Chris Woodrich facilitated a session on the LONTAR Project. This is a project that has enjoyed support from Wikimedia Australia because of membership involvement. There was a discussion about the National Library of Australia, and a slow down in digitisation efforts on TROVE, an important Australian resource that provides easy citations for Wikipedians. There were a few discussions about the potential usage of Spoken Word Wikipedia in a GLAM context and how this way of contributing to Wikipedia is another way of engaging stakeholders who might not otherwise contribute to English Wikipedia. There was a session on OGG video that was attended by a Sydney based GLAM person and two photographers who would like to work with GLAMs to take video and pictures related to these organisations for uploading to Commons. Wikimedia Commons has several issues related to video that make contributing video content in OGG format difficult, including size limitations, caching issues, thumb nail creation, and OGG's lower bit rate and inability to stream well.

Happy Birthday Wikipedia

Our Melbourne meetup coordinator Steven Zhang was pleased with the turn out of Melburnians on Sunday to celebrate MelbourneWikipedia's 2012 birthday on 15 January. Melbourne's beautiful weather brought together Wikimedians to make one of the best supported meetups held in Melbourne for some time, with 12 in attendance. Participants engaged in lively discussion over tasty pizza and hot coffee. As the meeting progressed we spoke about the 11th anniversary of Wikipedia, and led by our now retired intrepid WMAU public officer and committee member Brian, we charged our cups and glasses in a toast to Wikipedia.

In our midst were editors who have been editing for several years; others who are newly acquainted with Wikipedia and who were interested in getting started; others were enthusiastic about getting involved and knowledgeable about the GLAM projects; and others wanting to get involved with Wikimedia Australia with students from one of Melbourne's universities. Several other discussions took place about ongoing Wikimedia Australia GLAM projects and turned to potential future projects as well as offers of help and getting involved.

Wanting to sustain the momentum of the meetup, Wikimedia Australia members have already begun following up with participants including those who have some experience with GLAM related projects to ascertain what can be done in the future to support local efforts in Victoria. Steve believes it is important to maintain contact and therefore participants were happy to provide contact details, and agreed to being contacted prior to each monthly meetup.

We were fortunate to have on the day among the participants, one person who is a skilled photographer, and who like all passionate photographers goes nowhere without his cameras. He produced terrific individual and grouped photos of participants engaging in conversation around the table, as well as a group photo of all participants, and he countered protestation about him needing to be in the photo by an instructive reply that 'the photographer is always behind the lens'. He is pleased to give his permission to place his photos on Wikimedia Commons. So lots to organise post-meetup.

We all look forward to the February meetup and hope that more of our Wikimedian members and community come along and enjoy a great day with all of us; a day that was made possible because of the enthusiastic turn out on Sunday. We take this opportunity to thank everyone for their lively contribution to a successful meetup.

Lopit group in Melbourne

On 21 January, a Wikipedia Workshop was held in Melbourne Australia for Southern Sudanese immigrants living in Australia. It was organised by Michael Billington, and six people attended. The group learned the basics of editing Wikipedia by working on Lopit people, taking a stub article up to C class. This workshop is one of several planned for Southern Sudanese people in Melbourne. The workshop will help in Australia's GLAM efforts by giving the workshop facilitator an opportunity to do training that can be used with more traditional GLAM organisations and assist Wikimedia Australia in doing future outreach to minority community cultural organisations in a traditional and non-traditional GLAM sense.

Wikipedia on mobile phones in Africa and WikiAfrica welcomes a Wikipedian in residence at the Africa Centre in Cape Town

Wikipedia free on Orange mobile phones in Africa

The logo of Orange

Mobile phone company Orange has announced that they will be providing access to Wikipedia free to all their subscribers in Africa. The offer will be available progressively in all the 20 countries where they are active on the continent. Wikimedia Foundation and Orange signed a partnership.

Wikipedian in Residence at the Africa Centre

Mr Francis Awinda will be collaborating with the Africa Centre for the WikiAfrica Project.He has been working since 2003 as information officer at International Council of African Museums(AFRICOM). His training and experience is focused on African heritage and on the use of web technology for digitization and dissemination of information in public libraries and cultural institutions. In 2010 he participated in the workshop Wikimedia@MW2010 at Museums and the Web conference in Denver.

Africa Centre is a cultural platform based in Cape Town supporting and producing cultural projects and initiatives. In 2011 the Africa Centre adopted the CC BY-SA on its online documentation and in November launched a call for a Wikipedian in Residence in charge of contributing to WikiAfrica and coordinating more GLAM outreach in Africa.

doual'art: a cultural non profit organization focussed on contemporary art and urban research in Douala. Since 1991 doual'art produces public art and collects documentation about its city. doual'art provides all of its online documentation in CC BY-SA: project descriptions, artworks descriptions, biographies of artists and experts.

Chimurenga is based in Cape Town. The Chimurenga Library is a repertoire of magazines which influenced writing and thinking in Africa; the website is in CC BY-SA.

Kër Thiossane, an art centre, residency space and training facility based in Dakar. The centre provided training to intellectuals, artists and authors in Dakar on how to contribute to Wikipedia and wiki websites.

GLAMs related to Africa based outside Africa

NEW Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa, Leuven, Belgium

Festival de Cine Africano de Tarifa, now Festival de Cine Africano de Còrdoba. Spanish cinema festival specialized in African cinema providing film descriptions and biographies of filmmakers and experts in CC BY-SA (texts only).

A tool tracking and summarizing the views of all the pages that are using images that are in a Commons category. See Bonnier example for how to use. This is a mashup of GLAMorous and Wikipedia article traffic statistics.

Provides a list of interwiki links for a Wikipedia category, page view statistics, and QRpedia usage, if applicable. example

Example: Open access. See also the dedicated section below. Problem: did not work for Biology (just stated the number of articles under Biology - around 365k). Feature request:

Link to articles also from overview stats

Allow to sort by number of views or by alphabet or by number of interwiki links

Provide timelines

BaGLAMa

The table below gives an overview of the BaGLAMa statistics for commons:Category:Open access (publishing) for November and December 2011, compiled on December 4, 2011, and on January 23, 2012, respectively. Files from that category had thus been in use on over 15000 pages across 140 wikis, gathering on the order of 20 million monthly page hits. While the number of pagehits on pages with OA files decreased from November to December for most wikis (mainly due to the holiday season at the end of the year), the number of pages containing files from OA sources remained equal for most wikis and rose in all others, except in Pashto, where an OA image was removed in a rewrite. Further interesting anomalies are noted in the comments.

viwiki uses large numbers of stub templates, typically imported from enwiki, many of which contain images

vlswiki

67

1

87

2

20

1

warwiki

63

2

58

2

-5

0

wawiki

13

1

29

1

16

0

yiwiki

67

1

72

1

5

0

yowiki

39

1

65

1

26

0

zeawiki

21

1

12

1

-9

0

zhwiki

85907

131

76430

137

-9477

6

total

20407121

15004

41047381

17965

20640260

2961

see Russian

Documentation of DYKs and other temporarily featured content

There are various mechanisms by which featured content is categorized (e.g. featured images, featured articles), but what is the best way to document temporary featuring, such as the appearance on a wiki's Main Page as part of DYK or similar sections?

Access statistics

In the following, some manually gathered traffic stats are provided for those Wikipedias that featured File:Paratype of Paedophryne amauensis (LSUMZ 95004).png (originally published in PLoS ONE on January 11) on their main pages at some point during January 2012. The "dates" column gives the approximate period of the image being featured, unless the dates are linked.

Tool request: It would be good to have some tools that could construct such a table automatically for any given file or article, i.e. that would track whatever is linked from the main pages of any project, and provide stats and timelines related to that until the link or file are not on the main page any more.

The frog Paedophryne amauensis on a US dime. The image was featured on the Main Page of at least the Thai, Bulgarian, English, German, French, Chinese, Norwegian, Finnish and Russian Wikipedias in January (see gallery) and served as Open Access File of the Day on January 12, the day after the open-access article with the taxonomic description of the species had been published. The associated wiki articles about the species have been featured - or are scheduled to be so - on several other wikis, including the Spanish, West Flemish, Portuguese, Simple and Polish Wikipedias. It now exists in over 20 languages (see cross-wiki access stats). While being featured, it also drove considerable traffic to articles about the journal in which the original image was published (PLoS ONE) as well as its publisher (PLoS).

Topic Pages at PLoS Computational Biology

In September, the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology expressed an interest in publishing review articles suitable for being posted to the English Wikipedia as a seed for an evolving overview article on the subject (Signpost coverage). This kind of reuse of Open Access materials on Wikimedia projects - made possible by the journal using a Creative Commons Attribution license - goes beyond some existing partnerships with scientific journals, e.g. that with RNA Biology, which requires authors of manuscripts on new RNA families to accompany their submissions with the draft for a Wikipedia article (Wikinews coverage). By now, PLoS Computational Biology has established a dedicated manuscript track - Topic Pages - and the first manuscript has passed peer review and entered production. The initiative was well received at the Academic Publishing in Europe conference, one of the key conferences on scholarly publishing worldwide, where the Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science gave a plenary talk.

Featured content

Materials from Open Access sources or otherwise related to Open Access have been featured on several Wikipedias this month. The following examples have been gathered manually, but it would be nice to have some automated support for that. Technical aspects of the documentation of such feature events are also the subject of a dedicated section in the tool testing report.